Star Wars Blaster Strike (Plug and Play)

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Star Wars Blaster Strike was made in 2015 by HotGen ltd. It's a plug and play system and was released by Jakks Pacific.

The used gun is the famous blaster of Han Solo. The theatrical property of the movie was made of a Mauser C96. The particular gun of this system is a tad bigger and thus resembles more the Shanxi Type 17 pistols. The hammer is a special button used to trigger certain actions in the game. The built quality feels high. However the gun is a bit front heavy. An infra red light source is placed at the TV in order to allow the gun to measure in which direction it is pointed. The tracking works similar as the tracking at a Nintendo Wii. In fact compatible sensor bars and the usual tricks such as candles and combinations thereof are usable as well. The gun is pickier than a Wiimote and thus is incompatible to fast pulsed infrared light sources such as the Phillips Peace Keeper box, and taped down TV remote controls. I had to put the light source at the bottom of the TV in order to succeed calibration. The gun contains the gaming system itself and is plugged into the TV via RCA connectors, transmitting composite video. As such about 36 % of video quality is lost due to the shortcomings of the used transmission technology. The system is powered by four AA cells and the light source by three AAA cells.

In the game certain events of the original trilogy are played. The player either plays as Han Solo or Lando Calrissian. The game consists of 3 chapters which are made of 3 levels each, which yields a total of 9 levels. The game spans across the escape from Mos Eisley, the rescue of princess Leia, the destruction of the first death star, rescuing Luke from a Wampa, the defense of the Echo Base, the escape from Cloud City, battles on Endor, a boss fight against an AT-ST and the destruction of the second death star.

The levels can be selected freely once they are beaten. The player can pick up health, shields and other weapons by picking up icons which are revealed upon destroying barrels. Shooting enemies in a consecutive fashion without missing shots will fill a meter. This meter grants special items once it is full. Unlimited continues are available which allow the player to retry a level from the start after the protagonist died. Two levels of difficulty can be selected. For each difficulty level the high scores, achievements and earned medals are tracked independently.

Personally I really like the game. Nevertheless I would have preferred to have no cross hair on screen while playing. Even though the game uses digitized life action footage for the enemies, the game doesn't felt cheesy to me. It reminded me of the light gun segments of the Sony PlayStation game Star Wars Rebel Assault II, which utilized a similar style. Much to my pleasure the game is spliced up from time to time with popular Star Wars memes. The difficulty is adequate for the short length. The scoring system and the selectable higher difficulty setting offer good replay value.

I think the box art is very misleading as it shows Kylo Ren who doesn't appear in the original trilogy and segments of the battle of Hoth which are not covered in the game.